


the black dog

by hollimichele



Series: the dogfather au [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2019-11-05 13:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollimichele/pseuds/hollimichele
Summary: Remus woke up warm and comfortable, and that was all wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

Remus woke up warm and comfortable, and that was all wrong.

He was in his own bed. He ached all over, but there was nothing else too bad -- just a few shallow scrapes, carefully bandaged. The curtains were drawn. A glass of water and a pain potion waited on the nightstand.

But he should have been lying on the cold stone cellar floor, and he should have been alone. He could hear someone moving around, out in the main room of the ramshackle cottage he’d been renting. When he sat up and put his feet down on the creaking floorboards, though, the noise abruptly stopped.

It had been a bad month. Since the news out of Azkaban, Remus had been living with his heart in his mouth, waiting for word of-- something. Anything. He didn’t know what, or even what he hoped to hear. He’d gone into the full moon last night half-convinced that there would be something terrible waiting for him in the morning.

Instead, there was a soft bed and every indication that someone in the next room cared for him. But that was impossible.

Remus got up, pulled on the dressing gown he hadn’t left hanging on the bedstead the night before, and went to the door.

On the other side of it, a great black dog was sitting on his haunches, looking up at Remus.

Remus wished, suddenly, that he’d drunk the water. His mouth was dry. “Padfoot,” he said.

The dog whined, and put his head down between his paws. He was stick-thin, despite his size, all ribs and hipbones and jutting spine.

“Why are you here,” Remus said. He couldn’t find the strength to make it a question. He ought to be incandescent with anger. He ought to call the Aurors. There was an emergency Portkey somewhere, maybe. He could send a Patronus, if by some miracle he could manage to cast one--

But he didn’t move. He felt as though the black dog had pinned him in place with his eyes. His thoughts were running at quarter-speed, worse by far than the exhaustion that usually followed a full moon.

If Padfoot was here then he was the one who’d looked after Remus. He’d carried Remus upstairs, cleaned him up, tucked him carefully into bed. As if Remus was someone he loved.

But that had all been a lie, hadn’t it? Sirius had shown his true colors. Remus knew who Sirius Black really was, and that man should have killed him by now.

Unless he was wrong. Unless there was more to it. God, how Remus had wanted to be wrong, these last two years.

The black dog watched as if he knew what Remus was thinking -- and maybe he did. Was there anyone left who could know better? He sat up, and Remus took an involuntary step backwards. He didn’t know what was going to happen, or even what he wanted.

The dog turned into Sirius Black, kneeling on the warped floorboards of the grubby little cottage. “Hallo Moony,” he said. He sounded even more gravelly than Remus did. As if he hasn’t spoken to anyone in years.

“Why are you _here,_ Sirius,” Remus said, and Sirius flinched back as if Remus had hexed him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant to leave you alone. But last night was the moon, and I just-- I couldn’t stand to--”

“Why not?” Remus asked. He was starting to remember how angry he should be. “Why should you care, after what you did?”

“I _didn’t_ ,” Sirius said, his expression suddenly savage. “It was my fault, I should have worked it out sooner, but I would _never_ have betrayed Lily and James.”

“Then who-- oh no,” said Remus, understanding before he’d even asked the question.

Sirius nodded. “Wormtail,” he said. “We switched at the last minute. I should never have agreed to it, I thought we were so bloody clever--”

“Shut up,” said Remus, and startled Sirius into silence. He went around Sirius, keeping to the outside edge of the room, and fetched a glass vial from the cupboard. He fumbled for the one he wanted, knocking jars and bottles down from the dusty, neglected top shelf. Sirius didn’t stand, or even turn. His shoulders drooped; he looked like he might turn back into Padfoot and slump to the floor again.

Remus shoved the vial at him. “Drink it, and say that again,” he said.

Was it always so easy to see what Sirius was feeling? Remus had done his best to forget. He watched hope light Sirius up from the inside, bright as a _lumos,_ as he uncorked the Veritaserum and tossed it back.

“Peter was the Secret-Keeper for Lily and James,” said Sirius. He met Remus’ eyes, and didn’t look away; hardly even blinked. “I went after him once I realized he’d betrayed us to Voldemort. He blew up those Muggles and escaped as a rat. I shouldn’t have trusted him, I shouldn’t have let James trust him, Moony, please, I’m so sorry, you have to know how sorry--”

“Never mind that,” said Remus. “Never mind, just — come _here_ —” and he surged forward and hauled Sirius to his feet and threw his arms around him.

They staggered back into Remus’ bedroom like that, still clutching at each other, and fell more than lay on the bed. Remus didn’t think he could unlock his arms if he tried, or let go his fistfuls of Sirius’ ragged shirt. Sirius shuddered and clung tighter whenever Remus moved.

It wasn’t comfortable. Sirius was all sharp angles, skin and bones, and Remus wasn’t much better. It was the best Remus had felt in years.

After a while his body remembered that he was supposed to be exhausted, and a little of the frantic feeling started to ebb away. He let his head tip forward, against Sirius’ shoulder. Sirius shivered again.

“I have to find Harry,” Sirius muttered into the side of his neck. “Help me find him, Moony?”

_Oh_. Of course. That was why Sirius had escaped -- for Harry. Remus didn’t lift his head, just nodded against the rough Azkaban uniform Sirius still wore.

“Yes,” he said.

Just before Remus dropped off into unconsciousness, Sirius changed back into Padfoot, and draped himself half over Remus. The details were wrong: they weren’t in his curtained Hogwarts four-poster, Padfoot was too big and too thin, Remus had a hole torn out of his heart that had barely scabbed over. But it was still so familiar.

Remus fell asleep. For the first time in two years, he wasn’t at all afraid of waking up.

 

* * *

 

The first days passed in a blur: both of them exhausted, asleep more than awake. Not that Sirius could _stay_ asleep for any length of time. Padfoot twitched and whined unhappily in his sleep, and Sirius kept jolting himself out of nightmares, half-convinced he was still in Azkaban even as he clutched at Remus for proof that he wasn’t. Otherwise Sirius spent his time either bolting any food Remus put in front of him, or in the bath. After the third one the water managed to stay more or less clear. Remus spent two hours sound asleep on the tiled floor, wedged between tub and toilet, before Sirius woke them both up with a shout and a splash.

Remus didn’t leave the cottage at all, his latest off-the-books job forgotten. Presumably the Muggle restaurant found someone else to wash its dishes, eventually. But that meant running through his meagre savings even quicker than he usually did.

Soon enough Padfoot found him frowning over the local Muggle paper, searching the job postings.

“We’ve got to eat, you know,” he said, when Padfoot growled at him for it.

He changed back to human, still angry, and said “You’ve still got the key to my vault, haven’t you?”

For a second everything was perfectly ordinary: Remus too proud to be helped, Sirius annoyed that his Uncle Alphard’s money couldn’t solve the problem. And then they both remembered.

“I have it,” Remus said. His voice wanted to stick in his throat. “I never used it. Couldn’t.”

It didn’t need saying; the reason why hung there in the air between them. Sirius wouldn’t meet his eyes. “But-- James and Lily. In their will, they said, just in case--”

“You knew about that?” said Remus.

He got the letter somewhere in that first horrible month, when he still harbored some faint hope that he might wake up and find it had all been his worst nightmare in a strictly literal sense. Holding the stack of parchment from the Potters’ solicitor, though -- the note in James’ spiky, sprawling hand -- that was real. He knew there was no waking up.

_Remus_ , it said. _If you’re reading this, something bloody awful has happened to me and Lily. I hope you’re all right, at least. I’m going to be selfish and insist that you take the money we’ve set aside for you, no matter how much you don’t want it. There’s more than enough left for Harry, and we’d both like to know that you’re not scrambling to make ends meet. Anyway, Sirius is going to need your help. Consider this an advance payment on all the clothes you’ll need to replace when Harry inevitably sicks up on them--_

Remus hadn’t touched that money either; it felt just as much like blood money. He’d thought, vaguely, that someday he might get to see Harry again, and use it to buy him a gift. His first broom, maybe. Something James would have wanted him to have.

“ _Accio_ vault key,” Remus said. After a few minutes and some clattering noises from the next room, it flew into his hand.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know where to start,” said Sirius. He was staring at the table, at the much-folded scrap of ragged newspaper he had set there. It was half the Prophet’s front page, from more than a month ago, announcing the disappearance of the Boy Who Lived.

“I still have a few friends in the Aurors,” Remus said.

“No Aurors,” said Sirius. He waved at the paper on the table. “They don’t know anything, or this wouldn’t have run.”

“What about the Muggle police?” Remus asked. “They got there first. There might be a police report, if the Aurors didn’t Obliviate everyone.”

“Yes,” said Sirius. “You’ll have to go,” he added, and went on staring at his scrap of newspaper. It took Remus a moment to realize that meant they had a plan, of sorts.

It took longer than it should have. Remus wasn’t terrible at navigating the Muggle world; he’d had to learn, these last two years, given his employment prospects among wizards. But the search went in fits and starts, and so did everything else.

Really it was Remus who did most of it. Sirius tried, when he could, when he could stand to leave the house, when he could stand to be himself and not Padfoot. There were whole days he spent sitting on a chair by the front window, ears pricked, waiting for some danger that never came. He swung between frozen watchfulness and a sort of vibrating, helpless anger that never came to anything, because there was so little he could do that was, to his mind, of any use.

All the while, Remus sat with a stack or purloined Muggle telephone books and made lists of addresses and numbers to call, racking his brain for something he could say that would make Padfoot turn back into the Sirius of two years ago. But he never came up with it -- was fairly sure it didn’t exist, in truth -- so he just sat and made lists until he couldn’t stand the quiet any longer, and fled to the phone box in the nearest village.

Remus couldn’t get used to it. He’d never had to work to fill the silence, with Sirius around: that had never been his job. He was used to a Sirius who laughed off Remus’ poor attempts to look after him, on the rare occasions that he needed it. He didn’t know what to do with a Sirius who was weary and grim, who didn’t seem to notice cold or hunger. This Sirius wasn’t a picky eater, or a little bit vain; he didn’t make terrible puns or laugh at Remus’ jokes. He ate what was put in front of him, and still hadn’t brushed his hair, and answered questions in single words as much as he could.

But he was still Sirius: still the person Remus loved most in the world, especially now that everyone else was gone. He still talked with his hands, when he talked; even if his knuckles had gone knobbly and his nails were chipped, they still moved as fluently. He had huge dark circles under his eyes, they were mostly blank and distant, but when they weren’t fixed on something Remus couldn’t see they were fixed on _him,_ and in those moments Remus felt, again, like the most important person in the world.

They passed the month like that. Mostly silent, mostly sitting on either side of some huge invisible wall, each feeling wretched. At night it was a little better. In his sleep, Sirius forgot to tense up when he got within arm’s reach of Remus. Mostly Remus fell asleep at night with Padfoot curled up on top of his feet, and woke up in the morning with Sirius’s elbows -- so much sharper than they had been -- jabbing him in the ribs.

By the time the moon came round again, Remus felt that something had to give. Maybe it was just him: he’d never, as an adult, spent a whole month at home like this, without needing to worry about rent or the grocery bill or finding a new job. He felt almost well-rested, certainly for the first time in at least two years, and maybe longer.

Sirius had lost some of the awful hollow look to his face, and the dark circles under his eyes were perhaps a little smaller. The day of the full moon he talked more than he had in the previous week put together. It was enough of a relief that Remus almost didn’t mind that most of what he said was bossing Remus around, or arguing with him.

“We don’t have to stay here,” Sirius said. “There’s no need, you don’t have to--”

“I do,” said Remus. He’d let Sirius have his way all day, eaten the meals, taken the second helpings, turned up the heat and never mind the gas bill. On this, he would not budge. “This isn’t the Forbidden Forest. We don’t know the landscape, and there are too many people I could hurt, if you can’t manage me on your own.”

“I damn well can,” said Sirius. “And even if I couldn’t, I’m not going to let you chain yourself up like--”

“Like I’ve done every month for two years,” Remus said. Sirius flinched. “If you insist on being locked in the cellar with a wolf who hasn’t seen Padfoot in twenty-four months, I’m not leaving anything to chance.”

“Twenty-nine,” said Sirius, “but Remus--”

“What?” said Remus, brought up short.

Sirius lost the thread of the argument, too. “It wasn’t -- you said twenty-four. But it was twenty-nine. Since the last time I was there.” He had that wretched, guilty air again, and he wouldn’t look Remus in the eye.

“Oh,” said Remus. He hadn’t counted. It would have just made him feel worse. But Sirius had, somehow, in Azkaban, or worked it out after, and had apparently been carrying round twenty-nine full moons worth of guilt over his absence.

“Call it twenty-eight,” he said, eventually. “You _were_ here, last time.”

Sirius took that for the peace offering it was, and managed a smile. Not much of one, really, a watery imitation of the fearless, brilliant grin Remus knew best. But it was something.

And he gave in, after that. He followed Remus down to the cellar as evening drew near, and helped him cast wards on the door and the small high window. He folded Remus’ clothes, neatly, and set them on top of the furnace, out of reach, with Remus’ wand.

But he just stood frozen and watched, as Remus dragged the pile of heavy iron chains out of their tangle in the corner, and started to sort them out.

The shackles were big enough that he could just barely slip his hands into them, while he was human. With twenty-eight chances to practice, Remus only needed a few minutes to set them up, anymore.

When he was done, he stepped out of his house slippers and shivered, a little, at the cold of the stone floor. He still had a thin undershirt and shorts on, which he didn’t bother with ordinarily. But he’d accumulated twenty-eight full moons worth of new scars, and some unreasonable part of him didn’t want Sirius to see.

Remus went to pick up his slippers and realized that, actually, he couldn’t, without working one hand free and making a mess of the whole thing.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake--” he said, and Sirius unfroze.

He crossed the cellar to Remus, and said “You know, ordinarily I only fetch slippers as Padfoot.”

“Chew them, more like,” Remus said.

“You’re one to talk,” Sirius said, nearly laughing for the first time in at least twenty-nine months.

It was such a stupid, ordinary, _Sirius_ joke. The huge swell of happiness inside of Remus nearly drowned out the way all his joints hurt and his teeth itched and his skin felt somehow too big and too small at the same time.

Sirius was standing _right there_ , in arm’s reach without tensing up, and Remus’ self-control always went to pieces right before he changed. He reached out. There was just enough slack in the chains for him to grab Sirius by the front of the shirt, and yank him close, and kiss his smiling mouth.

There was time, barely, for Sirius to make a surprised noise, and drop Remus’ slippers, and bring his hands up to Remus’ face instead.

And then Remus felt it -- the moon, to which his traitorous body always gave priority, no matter what Remus would rather be doing. He broke the kiss, and shoved Sirius back, and managed to gasp out “Padfoot. Be Padfoot, _right now_ \--”

And then he was gone, until morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Remus woke up warm and comfortable, in his own bed. Sirius was spooned up behind him, one arm curled around Remus’ ribs. Pale grey light came in around the edges of the curtains, just a little, and rain was pattering on the glass.

Remus felt sore and tired and wrung-out, but nothing worse, and relief buoyed him up over all that.

When he moved, Sirius grumbled behind him, and tightened his grip. “I was sleeping,” he said, as if Remus couldn’t tell perfectly well whether or not Sirius was awake.

“No you weren’t,” Remus said. He twisted around, wincing a bit as various muscles protested, until he was facing Sirius.

“No, I wasn’t,” Sirius admitted. He looked — bad, still, thin and weary; and staying up all night minding a werewolf hadn’t improved matters. But he wasn’t bleeding anywhere, and he was looking at Remus with light in his eyes. On the scale Remus had lived by for the last two years, that was worth top marks and ten points to Gryffindor.

They’d had mornings like this before, a precious handful of them, when they both were too exhausted from the moon to do anything much, and they weren’t expected anywhere for hours. It had been easy, then, to lie there in the warm and drift, kissing and touching, nothing heated enough to call sex.

Sirius said, “Did you kiss me, last night?”

Remus nodded. Their heads on the pillow were inches apart, knees knocking against each other.

“I thought I might have dreamed it,” Sirius said. “I keep thinking, maybe I’m dreaming, maybe I’ll wake up and I’ll be--”

“In the spare room in Godric’s Hollow,” said Remus. It was what he’d hoped to wake up to, for the longest time, though he never had yet. “Under the scratchiest afghan known to man, with James shouting something about the Quidditch scores from the next room.”

“No,” said Sirius, the light dimming in his eyes. “That feels like a dream, too.”

He sat up abruptly. “It’s stupid,” he said. “I know it’s stupid, but when I was -- it felt like Azkaban was the only real place in the world. Like I was an idiot for ever imagining that there had ever been anything else--”

“You’re not,” said Remus.

He had faced Dementors once or twice, in the war; it had been horrible. He tried not to think about what it would be like to be locked up with them, day after day, for two years. He had _been_ trying not to think about that, day after day, for two years.

“You’re not,” Remus said again. He drew Sirius back down to lie beside him, pulled him close until he unbent and put his arms round Remus. “It was real. I know it all seems very unlikely, but I was there, and I promise you, it was.”

And there -- that got a half-choked bark of laughter. “I do want to believe you,” said Sirius. “Really.”

Some small, mean part of Remus, that he’d done his best to pack away somewhere at the back, thought _it would have been nice if you’d felt that way when you were choosing Secret-Keepers_. But he shoved it back in the cupboard, where it belonged.

He still knew what Sirius liked, knew how to kiss him so he went all yielding and hungry. They had nowhere they needed to be, no one expecting them anywhere. Remus remembered what to do with this sort of morning, even if Sirius didn’t, and he was more than willing to remind him.

Never mind that they had no one left to expect them anywhere, and the only job left for them to do might be one that led them to further grief. They could remember that again later, somewhere else. Here and now, Remus did his best to believe that this gray little room in his creaking cottage was the only real place in the world. If he could convince Sirius of it, too -- so much the better.

They did get up, eventually, and went back to the search. They had a list of the half-dozen police stations closest to where Lily’s sister had lived, and they worked out a list of questions for Remus to ask, and lies to tell.

By the third attempt, Remus wasn’t quite so nervous. He walked into the station with Padfoot on a lead beside him; in his free hand, he held the cane he was nearly always too proud to use. He knew he looked ill, most of the time, and people were more likely to be kind when they thought you were in a bad way. He just hated to take advantage of that, usually.

For this, though, he’d take any advantage, and cheerfully.

“Excuse me,” he said to the desk sergeant. “I’m looking-- well. It’s a bit of an odd situation, but I suppose I’m looking for a missing person. My godson.”

The sergeant looked a bit bored, but that was all right. Remus went on.

“You see, I’ve been in and out of hospital a fair bit, the last year and more. But now that I’m on my feet again, I tried to get in touch with his aunt and uncle, who I’d been told had taken him in when his parents died-- car crash, I’m afraid-- but I’ve had no luck at all in locating them. Or their nephew.”

Now the sergeant’s face was pitying, more than bored, but for once that was a good thing.

“Do you have a last known address?”

“I know they weren’t far from here,” Remus said. “Somewhere in Surrey. Lily and her sister didn’t get on very well. Her sister’s name is Petunia Dursley; her husband is Vernon, I think.”

Now the desk sergeant’s face went pale. “Oh dear,” said Remus. “Is something wrong?”

It was lucky, Remus reflected, that he’d had a couple of chances to practice, and that these particular Muggles were inclined to be sympathetic. He and Padfoot were ushered to a small office, and after a bit of a wait another Muggle policeman came in with a stack of folders.

Remus wasn’t a _very_ good actor, when it came to things that weren’t lycanthropy-related. But he did a good-enough job at feigning surprise when he was told that Vernon and Petunia were dead. He didn’t have to feign surprise at the next bit, though.

“Now, you say your godson-- what were their names, again? The parents as well,” said the detective.

“Lily and James Potter-- Lily Evans, before they married,” said Remus. “Harry’s their son. He was a year old at the time; he’ll be three, by now.” _And he might be_ , he told himself. _There’s a chance, still_.

“Right,” said the detective, writing this down. “You say you were told that his aunt and uncle took him in?”

“Yes,” said Remus. “I wasn’t well enough for it, though I wish I had been. And I don’t think I could have gotten legal custody, anyway, on my own.”

“And you haven’t spoken to them since?”

“Petunia and Lily weren’t close. It was difficult, between them. She hated James, and I was his friend.” None of that was a lie, and that made it a little easier to say.

The detective frowned. “Well. That makes some things a bit clearer, and some things a bit more complicated.”

There had only been one child living at Number 4, Privet Drive, the detective told them, and he was Vernon and Petunia's son. There was no indication that another child had ever lived there.

“But,” said the detective, “there was… an odd case, a couple of years ago. Not my case, and I don’t think the officer who worked it is still at this station. A man called us up and said someone had left a foundling on their front step. I remember commenting on it. Like something out of Dickens. The wife opened the door to take in the milk, and found a baby in a basket.”

Remus’ heart couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to sink or rise. “And you think that was Harry?” Padfoot made a concerned noise, and put his head on Remus’ knee.

“The name rang a bell,” said the detective. “I pulled the file, and I was right. It was the same couple. Do you think there’s some connection? Their deaths were ruled accidental -- gas leak -- but it made me wonder.”

“I can’t imagine that there could be,” said Remus. “I don’t think more than a handful of people knew they were supposed to take Harry in.”

“If you’ve got names or contacts for any of them, I’d appreciate it,” said the detective. “But if the baby’s been adopted and the records are sealed, you might have a difficult time finding him. I’m not sure what agency took him; it’s not in the files I have. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

“No,” said Remus. “No, that’s more than I’d hoped to find. Thank you.”

“If I turn up anything else useful, I’ll pass it along.” The detective stood, and then paused, looking at Padfoot.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said, “but your dog could use some feeding up. He doesn’t look well.”

“I know,” said Remus. He was getting better at lying on the fly, he thought. He hadn’t had this much practice since the war. “I haven’t had him long; he’s a rescue. I’m working on it."

This seemed to endear him to the detective, much more than anything else had. “Well, good,” he said. “And he trusts you already, I can see that. That’s the important bit.”

“I hope so,” said Remus.

He Obliviated the detective, and took the files. He Obliviated the desk sergeant as well, on their way out. They weren’t going to leave a trail that anyone else could follow, if they could help it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that earns the M rating, by which I mean: there is sex.

Remus woke up in his own bed, a little chilly because he’d kicked the blankets off sometime in the night. It was a week since the last full moon, and Remus felt -- good, maybe, or as close to good as he could imagine feeling. He stretched, to a chorus of popping joints, and fumbled for his dressing gown.

In the main room of the cottage, Sirius was puttering around by the stove, burning the eggs by the smell of it. He was wearing too-short pyjama bottoms and a threadbare Elvis Costello t-shirt that had never quite fit Remus right. When he heard Remus come in, he turned and smiled crookedly, waving hello with the spatula.

“Morning,” he said.

Remus stopped feeling chilly, very abruptly.

He stumbled to the bathroom and brushed his teeth as fast as he could manage it. It was absurd, he thought, that he should be lit up with wanting like this, over -- what? The sight of Sirius’ knobbly ankles? His doomed attempts at edible food? But it had been like this before, at Hogwarts and after: Sirius would do some perfectly ordinary thing, and leave Remus on fire for him for no reason at all.

By the time he was done, the burnt-egg smell was rather stronger, but he didn’t pay it any mind. “Sorry,” said Sirius. “There’s still toast, at least--”

“Not hungry,” said Remus. He backed Sirius up against the cupboards, and after a confused moment Sirius caught on, and caught up.

“ _Oh_ ,” he said, kissing Remus back.

They staggered back into the bedroom, after a while, without the dressing gown or the pyjama bottoms or the Elvis Costello t-shirt. Sirius left love bites all over Remus’ throat, his collarbones, the top of his chest. Remus had recently found that Sirius shivered and lost focus whenever Remus stroked his hands down his back, which he never used to do; Remus liked it, liked watching Sirius go glassy-eyed under his touch.

God, he had missed this, missed sex in general and sex with Sirius in particular. He hadn’t been celibate, exactly, but it had been a poor excuse for a love life: the occasional night out at a Muggle bar or concert, a boy or girl he knew he’d never see again. Half the time he hadn’t even made it home with them, backing out with some stammered, unconvincing lie, and Apparating away as soon as he was out of sight.

Remus rolled them over. Sirius looked up at him, eyes wide, and Remus knew what he was feeling because he felt just the same. Remus could read it off him, easier than any book: the same startled happiness. They hadn’t remembered it wrong. It really was this good. It really was something they could still have. It kept on being surprising, every time.

It wasn’t perfect, by any means: still awkward, still fumbling. They didn’t fit together as easily as they might have, once, when neither of them had quite so many sharp angles. _Like a couple of sacks of old broomsticks knocking together,_ Remus thought, but he was too glad for the thought to be anything worse than wry.

Just before the end of the war -- their last time, before the end of the war -- Remus had kissed Sirius because he didn’t want to lie, or argue, and he wasn’t supposed to talk about the spying he’d been doing for the Order. That time, that they hadn’t yet known would be the last, Sirius shoved Remus down into a hard-backed kitchen chair and went to his knees, sucked his cock fast and messy and a little too hard; like he was trying to win the argument they hadn’t had. It was better than anything that happened in the two years that followed.

This time, Sirius was slow, deliberate, careful: all things he had not been, habitually, before. He worked his way down, his mouth on Remus’ throat, his chest, the claw marks that ran crosswise over his ribs.

Usually, it was very difficult for Remus to stop thinking. His mind shut off without his say-so for every full moon; why should he ever want to do it voluntarily? But then Sirius wrapped his hand round the base of Remus’ cock, rubbed his thumb down the underside and dropped a kiss on Remus’ thigh, and his thoughts went skittering off into nothingness.

“God,” he said, “oh, fuck, yes, _oh--_ ” and that was all he could manage to think, too. All his hard-won rationality washed away, on a wave of _yes_ and _please_ and _oh, oh fuck, don’t stop_ as Sirius took him into his mouth.

Remus raked his hands through Sirius’ dark hair, catching on the tangles. He’d unpick them for Sirius later, he would, when he could think again, when he wasn’t busy trying to keep from shoving rudely up, or shouting, or accidentally Apparating, wandless, to the moon.

It wasn’t all he wanted, though. Remus tugged at Sirius’ free hand, kissed the palm and mouthed at his fingers. After a moment Sirius went still, let Remus’ cock slip out of his mouth and looked up at him, eyes dark and half-lidded. It made Remus squirm a little, that scrutiny, being watched as he sucked on Sirius’ fingers until they were wet enough.

He didn’t last long, after that: came with a shout muffled into his forearm, caught between Sirius’ mouth and his clever hands. Remus lay with his chest heaving, mind blank of everything but the thought that while, yes, he would still very much like for Sirius to fuck him, it might have to wait until he could stand to feel good for more than two bloody minutes without popping like a cork.

“Come here,” he said, and pulled at Sirius until he draped all his weight over him. Remus kissed him, put a hand to the small of Sirius’ back and coaxed him into a halting rhythm, rubbing off against Remus’ hip.

“Oh fuck,” Sirius said, after not very long at all, and came, and somehow got twice as heavy in the thirty seconds that followed.

Remus didn’t mind, not really. They lay like that for a while, sticky and breathless. Remus hoped that Sirius might fall asleep, but he didn’t. Eventually they went to clean up and instead fucked again in the bath, which got them both bruised elbows and a lot of water slopped onto the floor, none of which Remus minded in the least.

“What are you smiling about?” Sirius said, when they were finally clean and dressed and ready to buckle down to the day’s work, which was, still, trying to track Harry through the baffling, byzantine maze of Muggle bureaucracy he’d vanished into.

“Dunno,” Remus said, but it was a lie, and they both knew it. Sirius’ mouth crooked up at the corners, too, just for a moment. 

Remus thought, _I don’t need anything more than this. This would be enough, forever_ , and then he had to go look for a fresh quill before he gave himself away.


	4. Chapter 4

Remus woke up cold, and naked, lying on the damp ground in an unfamiliar forest. His shoulder hurt when he tried to sit up. He was dirty, his hands and feet were all over scrapes, but he wasn’t bleeding and he didn’t have anyone else’s blood on him that he could see, or feel the tacky itch of drying blood anywhere he couldn’t. Dawn light was filtering through the pale new leaves overhead, and he was alone.

He had just enough time to work himself into a proper panic before Padfoot found him. He was carrying the bag with Remus’ clothes in his mouth, and he was limping.

“What happened?” Remus said. His voice was rough, his mouth dry and sour-tasting.

Padfoot put the bag down and turned into Sirius, sprawled on the ground beside him. He was nearly as dirty as Remus. One of his trouser legs had a long tear in it, all the way up to the knee.

“What happened was, I fell down a ravine,” he said. “And then you invented an exciting new game called Chase Moony Along the Bottom of the Ravine All Fucking Night.”

And that was a relief, that was such a massive, blessed relief -- nothing had gone too badly wrong, he hadn’t hurt anyone, he hadn’t hurt _Sirius_ \-- but somehow it did nothing for the tension holding Remus in its grip. He still felt it, constricting his breath, making his ribs hurt, some huge and awful feeling he didn’t know how to name.

“We’re not doing this again,” he said.

They spent most of the month that followed not-quite-fighting over it. Sirius wound himself tighter and tighter as the days passed, chafing at the bounds of the cottage, trying to throw himself into arguments that Remus simply refused to engage in. They were both snappish and short-tempered. When they fucked, Remus pulled Sirius’ hair too hard and Sirius left fingerprint bruises.

It felt like all the careful mending they had done, these last few months, had come unraveled. Sirius went back to pacing, over and over across the creakiest floorboards in the cottage, until Remus lost his temper at him, just a little, before he could clamp back down on it. Then he went to pace in the back garden as Padfoot, or sat another long watch at the window. A vast silent chasm opened up again between them, full of the things Remus had been trying to leave behind since the end of the war.

The search for Harry kept dead-ending, too, sputtering out into cul-de-sacs and wrong turns, into _please enter the extension of the party you would like to reach_ and _I’m sorry, but she doesn’t work here any longer._ That only made everything else worse: any victory, even a small one, might have broken the chill that was building between Remus and Sirius. But there was nothing, no scrap of success to force a thaw.

“Pointless,” Remus said, after a gray and dispiriting afternoon spent chasing down a woman who was not, as it turned out, the doctor who looked Harry over when the Muggles first had him. “This is pointless, we’re never going to--”

“We have to,” said Sirius. “I can’t -- there’s nothing else I can do.”

It was the longest sentence he’d produced in days, but that only turned Remus’ mood darker. It was small of him, he knew, low and mean and petty, but he couldn’t squash the feeling down anymore. He’d been trying, since the last moon, but the nameless panic that seized him then had never quite let go, and it made everything else harder.

So he said, “I know, I know, he’s the only person you care about in the whole bloody world and nothing else matters. Never mind that he won’t even know who we are, if he’s anywhere to be found at all--”

Remus stopped himself, with an effort. There was more bile that wanted to spill out, but he forced it down: it wasn’t right to feel like this, to begrudge Sirius the only thing that kept him going. To feel jealous, of all things, of a child who might need them, who he loved too, who he wanted to find just as badly.

It was wrong, he knew, to resent that Sirius had escaped Azkaban for Harry, and not for him. So he didn’t, most of the time. It just slipped out, every once in a while.

Sirius was staring at him, frowning, thoughtful. Remus didn’t like the look in his eye.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Didn’t you?” said Sirius.

“Of course not,” said Remus. He kept his eyes down, on the papers in front of him. “I’m just -- frustrated, that’s all, and the moon’s in a week and I’m in a foul temper because of it. You know how I get.”

“I know when you’re lying, too,” said Sirius. “Why won’t you just -- fucking _talk_ to me, Moony, for once--”

“There’s nothing to say,” Remus insisted. He didn’t look up. He refused to. Sirius made an inarticulate, frustrated sound, a growl that meant _why must you be like this_ , but that was all.

They lapsed back into frozen silence, for a while.

“Look,” Sirius said, just when Remus had begun to hope he’d drop it, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Remus said.

“Yeah, I do,” said Sirius. “It’s my fault everything’s fucked, isn’t it?”

“It’s Wormtail’s fault,” said Remus.

“I let him take my place,” said Sirius. “I ran mad, afterwards, and got myself arrested. I didn’t tell anyone what really happened. And now I’ve taken over your life, for something that isn’t -- someone who might not even be--”

“It’s all right, Padfoot,” Remus said. “It’s not as though there was much to take over.”

“Oh, fuck off,” said Sirius. 

Remus had determinedly kept his head down, all along, but that startled him enough to look up. Sirius looked guilty and miserable, yes, but also furious, and furious at Remus in particular. Which was just -- typical fucking Sirius Black, wasn’t it? Not enough to be angry at everyone who’d earned it, and at the world in general. There had to be some left over for Remus, too, when all Remus had done was spend two years alone in the dark believing he’d never been loved.

The rational part of Remus’ brain pointed out that Sirius had done just the same, in Azkaban, and Remus firmly ignored it.

“If the life I’ve been living bothers you so much, you might have thought to come and tell me sooner,” he said. His voice rose, and kept rising; for all that he didn’t like shouting, he was certainly capable of it. “I know you were planning to sit in a cell and punish yourself ‘til you found out Harry might need you, but I’ve been here all along!”

“I didn’t exactly waltz out of there!” Sirius said. He was on his feet, and so was Remus. “I only managed it because I thought Harry was in danger, that he needed me in that moment, and I could focus enough on that to keep my head together.”

“ _I_ needed you in that moment!” said Remus. “And all the ones before it, you stupid -- what did you think I was doing, while you were in there?”

“I thought you’d be getting on with your life!” said Sirius. 

“I’m a werewolf and all my other friends are dead,” Remus snarled. “This _is_ getting on with my life. I never expected anything else.”

And that ended the argument, in one efficient blow. Sirius stared at him, rooted to the spot by guilt and rage, more effective than any Sticking Charm. Until the moment broke, quite abruptly. 

Sirius said “I can’t -- I need to clear my head. I’ll be back, I promise--” and slammed his way out the back door, changing to Padfoot as he went.

Remus stood there, alone, for a long time. After a while, he noticed it was dark outside. He went into the next room, and pulled the blankets up over his head, and didn’t sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Remus woke up alone that morning, or anyway he was alone in the bed when the sun came up. He got up to use the toilet, and lay down again until he was hungry, and ate a little, and eventually it was dark again. Sirius didn’t come back. When it was light again outside Remus put on his dressing gown, and sat down at the table, and stared unseeing at the paper scattered over the surface.

It wasn’t so very different from how he’d spent his days after the end of the war. Except for how it was, and what he was thinking about.

It was something Remus had thought about, in shameful moments, back during the war. He had tried to reason it out: who he would save, if he had to choose, and who he could bear to live without.

He’d thought,  _ if it’s only the five of us left, I could stand it. Me and Sirius, and Lily and James and Peter. We could go on, after, if there’s an after.  _ And then he’d bargained further.  _ Even if I don’t make it, they’d manage. James and Lily would look after Sirius; Peter has his family. _

And sometimes, in the dark of the night, in the aftermath of fights that didn’t just whittle the Order’s numbers down but gouged great bleeding holes in their ranks:  _ Let me keep Sirius. Please. I could survive anything else. _

As if that was a deal he could make, or had the right to ask for. As if he had any say or anything to bargain with but his own life in trade. As if the universe would hear him make the offer, and do anything but laugh.

Perhaps it heard, and the two years after the war had been its counteroffer: everyone and everything lost, and Remus carrying on, somehow, anyway. It was what he’d expected, deep down, all along. It was what some part of him still knew he deserved.

And then he was granted a reprieve. Him and Sirius, together, the only survivors of the wreck. Until Remus ruined it.

Remus sat alone on the mossy back steps of his cottage, and watched the light drain out of the afternoon sky. The moon would be rising, soon enough, and he needed to go down to the cellar. He was going to get up in a minute, and do it: bar the door, and bolt it, and cast half a dozen protective spells, and sort out the tangled pile of chains, and all the rest of it. He would. In just a minute.

A gaunt black dog came trotting up the path, through the overgrown garden. It stopped a few paces from Remus, and sat there on the flagstones, staring at him.

Remus didn’t feel relieved, exactly. He was still so terribly angry, in all directions at once: at Wormtail, at the Ministry, at James and Lily for leaving him to sort this mess out without them. At the moon and at the whole idea of lycanthropy, in general and in his own specific case. At himself, but that wasn’t new. He’d been angry at himself for wanting Sirius, for missing him when he still thought Sirius had destroyed everything Remus loved. Now he was angry that he hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t worked out the truth, hadn’t loved Sirius well enough to save him from Azkaban -- or to be any help at all, now he was free.

And he was angry at Sirius, too. For not trusting Remus back in the war, for letting grief drive him to madness, for thinking he deserved to be framed for Peter’s crime. For not escaping sooner. For expecting Remus to be better than he was: more healed, more whole. For thinking Remus needed more than a life in the shadows with Sirius, when Remus knew the only alternative was a life in the shadows, alone. For making him hope that Harry could be found, that something more could be saved from the ashes. For leaving.

But. He’d come back. He’d said he always would, and he had.

“All right,” said Remus. He got to his feet and went inside, and the black dog followed him.


	6. Chapter 6

Remus woke up in his own bed, warm, spooned up behind Sirius, face mashed against the back of his neck. Nothing hurt worth mentioning. He didn’t think Sirius was asleep; he still hadn’t seen Sirius get any proper sleep except as Padfoot.

Remus tried not to move, or change his breathing, or give any sign he’d woken at all. But after a few minutes his leg cramped up horribly, and when he shifted to relieve it Sirius went tense all over and tried to pull away.

“I’ll go,” Sirius said, low and resigned.

Remus shook his head, or at least made the nearest approximation that didn’t require ungluing himself from Sirius. He tightened his grip around Sirius’ middle.

“No,” he said. “Stay. I want you to stay.”

“But,” Sirius said. “You’re still.”

“A mess?” said Remus. “Yes.”

“Angry at me, I meant,” said Sirius. He was still holding himself carefully, unmoving.

“That, too,” said Remus. “Still. It’d be worse without you.” 

He fell silent; the next bit was hard to say. Finally, he managed it. “It _was_ worse without you. Even before I knew it wasn’t your fault.”

“It _was_ \--” Sirius started to say, but Remus cut him off. He pulled at Sirius until he turned over. Sirius wouldn’t quite look at him, but it was better than talking to the back of his head.

“It wasn’t,” he said. “You didn’t kill them. Let me be bloody furious at you for the things you actually _did_.”

Sirius didn’t want to. That was obvious enough, had _been_ obvious from the start. He scowled and squirmed and hid his face, and Remus let him, watched as he tried to unpick the knots of guilt and grief he’d been using to tie Lily and James’ deaths to his own conscience.

“All right,” he said, at last. “All right. I don’t -- believe it, yet, not really. But I’ll try.”

And then he surprised Remus. Sirius surged forward, pushing Remus onto his back and pinning him, seizing his wrists when he tried to shove Sirius off. There was a look in his eye that Remus recognized: it had, historically, meant that Remus was about to be talked into something he did not want to do.

Sirius said, “But If I’m going to do that, you have to promise me something.”

“Depends on what it is,” said Remus.

Sirius laughed, the there-and-gone bark that was his laugh now. “No it doesn’t. I _know_ you, Moony, and I know you’ll try to wriggle out of it, but you’re not fucking going to. This crap about how you don’t deserve any better, how you expected to end up alone with a shit life -- no more of it.”

“But,” Remus said. _It’s true_ , he didn’t say out loud, but Sirius seemed to hear it.

“Everyone’s gone, yeah,” he said. “And you had to muddle through alone, and I should have come back for you sooner. And the world won’t see what you’re worth, because of your _furry little problem_. It’s a fucking horrible way to live, but--” and he gave Remus a little shake, as if to punctuate it-- “you _do_ deserve better. You always did. I was supposed to be the one who gave it to you, but I fucked that up.”

Remus gave him a warning look.

“Oh, fine,” he said. “Never mind the last bit. If you want me to believe it’s not my fault that everything’s fucked, you have to believe it’s not your fault either.”

The trouble was, Remus wasn’t sure he _could_. He tried, for a moment, to hold the thought in his head: _I’m not doomed, I deserved better_ \-- but it burned to touch, or slid from his grip, or something less metaphorical that stung just as badly. He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Sirius was still looking at him with the same determined frown.

“For now,” Remus said, “how about, I’ll believe it for you, and you’ll believe it for me. Just to start with.”

Sirius relaxed his grip, and his frown went thoughtful as he considered it. He let Remus push himself up to sitting, and settled beside him on the bed.

“All right,” he said. “Deal.”

Things got better, slowly, after that. Remus let himself admit to his anger, a little at a time, and eventually he couldn’t taste the red-hot ball of it at the back of his throat anymore. Sirius stopped assuming he knew what was best for Remus; Remus started believing him, sometimes, when he said that Remus deserved to be happy. They told one another that Lily and James would have wanted this or that thing: for Sirius to enjoy the books he’d first read with James, for Remus to amass a collection of Muggle records that far eclipsed Lily’s. For both of them to blame Peter, and not themselves, for what had happened. 

They amassed a list of Muggle adoption agencies and worked their way through them, one at a time, Apparating in to search their records in the dead of night. Sirius learned to sleep, learned to cook without a flame-freezing charm at the ready, learned an array of disguise and concealment spells that he almost never used if he could go out as Padfoot instead. They both got better, a little at a time, at being taken care of, when they needed it. They both got better.

Remus forged a set of Muggle identity documents, and got himself hired at a primary school where a child who might have been Harry was enrolled. He wasn’t, but Remus found that he liked teaching, more than he’d ever expected to. They spent three months in the south of France, looking for an Algerian family who’d adopted a boy matching Harry’s description. He wasn’t Harry either, but they both got suntans and broke up a ring of Dark wizards based out of Marseilles.

And then one day -- one night, really, or very early morning -- Sirius opened a folder in the records room of a Muggle office building, and said “Remus, look at this.”

It was a file for Baby Boy H, taken into care on November the first of nineteen eighty-one. Baby Boy H had green eyes and a jagged cut on his forehead. He was, according to the file, _most likely of Asian descent._ His age was estimated to be sixteen months; he was alert, healthy, and met all appropriate developmental targets. His social worker recommended he be matched with a Muggle couple who, she noted, were _actively seeking to adopt and would in all likelihood wish to provide permanence, if the family of origin cannot be found._

There was a grainy photocopy of a torn piece of paper -- _original in police custody pending close of investigation --_ that said, in unfamiliar handwriting, _his name is Harry._

The Muggle couple was in the file, too.

“Do you think--?” Sirius said.

“I do,” said Remus.

“He might not be there any longer,” said Sirius. “They might not have kept him. They might have moved house.”

“Tell you what,” said Remus. “We’ll sleep on it. Decide in the morning.”

  

* * *

 

When Remus woke, the next day, Sirius was sitting up in bed beside him, looking through the file again. Remus stretched, and yawned, and cuddled up to Sirius’ side; Sirius smiled down at Remus, a little absentmindedly, and carded his fingers through Remus’ hair. Remus didn’t fall back asleep, not quite, but it was nice to drift while Sirius made up his mind.

“Well?” Remus said, eventually.

“I think we can find him,” Sirius said. “I think we should.”

“I’d better get up, then,” said Remus. 

Sirius laughed. He set the file down and bent to kiss him.

“Not just yet,” he said.


End file.
